you haven't written a
Libretto long ago yourself. You have a very vivid imagination, and a
fine command of language.'

"_Ludwig_. 'Yes, I have imagination enough to invent plenty of good
plots. Indeed, often, when at night a slight headache keeps me in that
dreamy condition which is like a struggle between sleeping and waking,
I not only think of splendid subjects for operas, but see and hear them
being performed, to my own music. But, so far as the faculty of
retaining them and writing them down is concerned, my belief is that I
am wholly without it. And in fact it is scarcely to be expected of us
composers that we should acquire that technical, mechanical skill
(which is necessary to success in every art, and only comes by constant
perseverance and long practice) which would enable us to write our own
librettos. But even if I had the skill to write out a plot, properly
arranged in lines, scenes, etc., I scarcely think I should set to work
to do it for myself.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'But then nobody could so thoroughly understand your
special musical tendencies as yourself.'

"_Ludwig_. 'That, I daresay, may be true enough. Still, I can't help
thinking that a composer who should sit down to put the idea of a plot,
which had occurred to him, into the words would be something like a
painter who should be called upon to make a minute etching, or a
line-engraving, of his picture before setting to work to draw it and
colour it.'

"_Ferdinand_. 'You mean that the necessary fire would smoulder out
during the process of versifying?'

"_Ludwig_. 'I think it would. My poetry would seem trashy, to myself;
something like the cases of rockets which had fallen down, charred and
empty, after rushing all resplendent up to the skies. To me it appears
that in no art so much as in music is it so essential that the entirety
of the subject involved, with all its parts, down to the minutest
detail, should be grasped by the mind at _first_, in its earliest,
glowing outburst; because in no other is subsequent polishing and
altering so hurtful. I am convinced, by my own experience, that the
melody which comes to you, as at the wave of an enchanter's wand, the
first time you read the words of a poem, is always the best--nay,
probably the only really _right_ one (for that particular composer at
all events), to put to it. It would be impossible for a composer not to
think of the music called for by the situation, while he was writing
down the w